The photographic practice of Yvonne Venegas It is an intimate and ethnographic exploration, in which it seeks to understand and document the life of the people and the spaces that photography. «Projects always have to do with questions that I am doing”Venegas explained.
Yvonne Venegas, Mexican photographer.Pepe Molina.
One of the recurring issues at work is The border exploration, not only as a geographical line, but also as a conceptual space of cultural and social interaction. Growing in Tijuana, on the border between Mexico and the United States, has deeply influenced its artistic perspective. «I understood that there is not really a border … one flows from side to side,» said Venegas, highlighting how this cultural duality is reflected in his photographic approach. An example of this practice is your best known series, «María Elvia de Hank», which offers an intimate look at the life of the wife of a prominent Mexican politician, revealing the dynamics of power and complexities of the social environment in which it moves. In his recent exhibition, «Survival gestures»Venegas adds an intimate and self -ethnographic perspective, since the project arises from its own family and personal history. Through this work, Venegas investigates notions of territory, orphanhood and the idea of the landscape as a witness of abandonment and space of intimacy: «I imagine the landscape as a refuge, as an intimate space,» the photographer deepened.
Mariana, 2021.Yvonne Venegas.
«I imagine the landscape as a refuge, like an intimate space.»
– Yvonne Venegas.
This autoetographic approach allows Venegas to portray the landscape to delineate their own movement and know the spaces where their ancestors moved. Besides, Venegas has collaborated with artists, actors and dancers living in the places he has visited, creating images that show the bodies that browse these spaces. «To be able to use my own practice to investigate issues that I don't know what other way I would play … it's a luxury,» Venegas concluded.
With its innovative and deeply personal approach, it continues to redefine the limits of photography with a unique and powerful vision of identity and culture complexities in an increasingly interconnected world. Not only documes reality, but also invites reflection on the liminal spaces between the past and the present, art and life.